Requiem for a Shieldmaiden
by Lady Dernhelm II
Summary: A vignette from Eowyn's point of view after the War of the Ring and her marriage to Faramir. Explores the idea of her character as hero and as traitor.


Notes: This story takes place three years after the War of the Ring, when Éowyn lives with Faramir in Ithilien, and as there is no indisputable record of her son's birth year, for the purposes of this story it hasn't occurred yet. Quotations **from** the Witch-King come from The Return of the King, "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields." All other italicized passages **regarding** the Witch-King are mine. All "quotations" attributed to Gríma are also mine, as are the conversations between Éowyn and Faramir. This story works from the assumption that it is Éowyn who killed the Witch-King, thus fulfilling the "no living man" prophecy. I know some people believe it was Merry, since it was his blade that broke the spell over the Witch-King, but personally, I think that Tolkien would not have emphasized Éowyn's gender constraints if he hadn't intended her to defy them in this heroic manner.

**Requiem for a Shieldmaiden **

_In the night he called to her, softly, coldly, like the voice of her own death speaking to her in black waves that froze her blood. He stole her breath, weaving it into his own, until he made of her a corpse, and dying against him she knew eternity and found it vast and empty… _

She awoke before sunrise, when the dawn began as a thin blue band against the darkened east. For a moment that old pain was there: her left arm shattered, powerless, her right death-cold and heavy. For a moment she felt her life bleeding out of her, felt his eyeless face staring into her, threatening to rend her soul apart. For a moment there was death, and then her eyes opened, then the breath, then the light.

She pushed away the blankets, the heavy furs that had been a gift from her brother. Musk of horses. The scent of gold and of flowers. The white walls that surrounded her banished the illusion of her homeland, but the familiar smell remained, filling her nostrils as it ever had before the war.

_I abandoned you_. A heavy thought, one that haunted her conscience well into the sunlit hours, though she gave no outward indication of it. And it was true; no matter how she wanted to believe her husband's reassurances, she could not deny it, nor escape it in his arms. _I left, I forsook, I abandoned_.

She touched his shoulder, comforted by the warmth of his skin. He would sleep for hours yet unless she or someone else came to wake him. The sunrise did not disturb him as it did her—she awoke at first light daily, while he still lay abed until almost noon. If his dreams were dark she did not know it for he slept easily, uttering an occasional sigh and turning only in comfort. Never in the night did his arms tighten painfully about her, nor did his lips ever expel into her ear threats or sounds of pain. Indeed, he slept almost as a child would: innocently, quietly, peacefully, unmolested by the dark night and the phantoms that dwelt therein.

The night had been warm; the shutters were open an inch and from beyond them came floating the song of a thousand birds. She was wholly unfamiliar with them. In her homeland she had known the birds of prey—the great hawk, the eagle, the vulture that fed on dead flesh. The tiny songbirds had hardly fazed her: they served as food for the larger species and nothing more. Even their voices were lost amid the clatter of hooves.

_I abandoned_.

A songbird. That's what she had been, or else what fate had intended for her. A pretty starling, dressed in virginal white, a pet fit only for a child's attention or a useless trinket won in battle. Her sex would have had her perched in her cage for all eternity, chirping the war songs to which the men would ride off, singing for them when they returned as they drank to their own bravery.

A songbird. A maiden, devoid of shield or sword despite her title. And what was she now? A warrior, as she had so longed to become? A queen, as his face had inspired in her? Or was she forgotten, gone now back into the kitchen to do a woman's work as befitting not a Lady but instead a servant? True, there was no longer any king who required her perpetual assistance, but her new profession was not so very far from the nursemaid she had been for him.

She had never wanted to be the lady to whom the men returned, the beautiful figure worthy of their lips but not their swords. Her face was of no importance to her; it had been her uncle, her brother, it had been the men she so admired who deemed her beautiful as if it were a title in itself, as if it required some great and valiant effort on her part. It was not until her uncle's advisor began to follow her in the dark that she had realized what a man might want of her; it was not until she saw the future king of Gondor's face, saw his hand on the hilt of his sword, that she wanted to be thought beautiful at all. And it was then that she first entertained the thought of becoming a queen, for she had always desired the throne for her cousin and then, upon his death, for her brother. But to marry into the position, to obtain it not through the death of a loved one but through a union with the very kind of man she might have been herself: it was a wicked desire, but nonetheless one that had possessed her heart.

And then she had become neither of these. When beauty and courtly titles ceased to matter, when the king spurned her advances, she had at last claimed that position that should have been hers. Like her father and brother before her, she rode into war. It was a suit of mail, not a bridal gown, that had brought her into glory. And how black that glory had been, how unintended and unwanted. She had moved in front of the beast to protect her kin, not to kill it, though kill it she had and its dark master, too. And now she could not be rid of him; his black countenance was with her every minute, though he had been gone from the world for three years now.

_I abandoned_.

Her husband knew, of course, that the shadow had not left her untouched, knew that she still dreamed of the hideous King and his terrible mount. There was no healer who could drive it from her. It was the price of her glory. There would be songs about her one day: the Lady Éowyn who dared stand before the Witch King of Angmar, the White Lady of Rohan who followed the king to war in guise of the warrior Dernhelm who slew the Lord of the Nazgûl. She hoped never to hear them. Never would she regret what she had done for it, if nothing else, had fulfilled her, but every reminder stirred the darkness he implanted in her bones.

_I abandoned._

They would have called her a traitor had she not succeeded. If she had been found before the company reached the Pelennor, dressed in a suit of mail designed for a man and skulking behind her helmet like a coward, her uncle would have turned her back immediately, berating her for her disobedience. And all would have known of her ignominy when she came riding back into Dunharrrow, angry and shamed, resentful of those left behind in her charge and unsatisfied still. The women, knowing her sin, would have felt no need to accept her in her uncle's stead; the few men who lived to return would have looked down on her with more hatred than that with which they looked upon Wormtongue.

But she had become a hero in war, or so they said of her. Her brother's eyes as he sat with her in the Houses of Healing were never accusatory, nor were those of the men who had accompanied them back to Edoras with her uncle's body. Surviving her final battle excused her from their blame. Had it not been for her, Théoden would have been tortured and his body desecrated; had it not been for her, the battle would have gone far worse, indeed. The Hobbit received their honor, too, but he was not truly one of their own: these men had known Éowyn as their lady since she had first come to live in her uncle's care and their hearts and praise had ever been with her.

She knew what they said about her, that she had fulfilled a prophecy, that she alone could have stayed the Lord of Nazgûl's hand against her uncle. She gave little thought to it. It had never been a victory for her, even as she fell over him, knowing he had died or otherwise departed at the end of her sword. His darkness had not left with his spirit; it had seeped into her, filling her to the marrow. And when she awoke he had been with her still, and she lay crumpled with his infection, healed of physical wounds but mentally incurable.

She felt him even now, in the night when her husband lay sleeping next to her, in the cold morning before all but the birds awoke. His voice arose in her ears as if he were once again before her. Some days she opened her eyes weeping, fighting the arms that for a moment seemed cold and dead and inescapable.

She had often wondered the full extent of his touch, the depth of the shadow (so much darker than that which had chilled her in Meduseld) he had cast forever over her. In three years there had been no child. No lack of trying on her husband's part, nor of desire for him on hers, could account for it. They had lain together countless nights and always she expected (_feared_) the illness that often heralded a pregnancy, and always there was nothing.

"It's of no consequence yet," Faramir had said to her when first she began to suspect the fault was her own. "There are many years left for us, unless you've grown tired of me already and intend to kill me in my sleep."

She could only laugh, pretending to find it more amusing than she really did.

And yet there must be a child, whether it was a high priority for him or not. He would need an heir. Though she doubted he would ever be consumed by his father's mad lust for a son in his own image to inherit the stewardship, as the years passed the need for one would only grow, and if her stomach failed to grow with it there would be for them only humiliation.

He was ever kind to her, though. Once he had even cited his past injuries as the probable cause, but she would have none of it. She remembered too well the black glove against her flesh, the empty face boring into every inch of her as she, shuddering, defied it, and his voice—

_…he will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shriveled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye…_

—she felt those words eating through her mail even into her womb, making of it a barren wasteland.

She returned to the bed, sitting gently on the edge so as not to disturb him. Her very movement was a lie: she wanted him to wake, wanted to see his dark eyes that could so easily make her forget the Black King's face. How foolish she had become, how like those women she had once disdained, the mindless wives who waited only for their husbands' return and then knew only his touch until his next departure.

_Not a fate for you, my lady_. Such soft words, such a soft voice as she had not openly remembered for so long—Gríma's hand found her arm in the darkness, pulled gently at her sleeve. _A daughter of kings should not have a life so base—waiting on her husband as she long waited upon an ill uncle. She should have honor even in marriage_.

Would he have let her keep her honor? Would he have kept her as the shieldmaiden she was and not a groveling invalid as he had made of her uncle? Living under his watchful eyes she had seen both his desire to be called her lover and his hatred of her for never quite succumbing to him. And there had been temptation, though she had not willed it, deep in the night when he'd found her mourning the state of her uncle, of her brother, of herself. There were times when he might have seduced her without the aid of any wizard's strength, times when he might have convinced her that he was her only true friend, or coaxed a kiss from her lips. Her brother had never known. She'd told him of Wormtongue's advances but never of how often she felt herself yielding. But the wizard Gandalf had known, hadn't he? Even as he counseled her uncle it seemed she had felt his cold eyes burning into her, not to draw out any poison but to uncover it, to expose her for the hypocrite she had become—the White Lady of Rohan who scorned both sex and country.

_I abandoned. _

And yet she had been cured of it. No wizard's skill had at last excised the evil Gríma had worked to instill in her, nor any king's healing hands: it had been a Steward's son, high atop the walls of Minas Tirith as she watched for the darkness of the East to either break or consume her. With but a command he drove from her mind the warrior she had once so longed to be; with but a kiss he made her forget the other men who had, with her consent or not, staked a claim on her heart—the seduction of Gríma, the desire for Aragorn. His eyes, constantly watching her in the gardens, ceased to remind her of those of Wormtongue, and when he touched her she no longer felt Wormtongue's cold, longing hands. Disgust she had once felt at the idea of any man, save Aragorn, putting his hands on her, but she gave in to Faramir easily, feeling an abrupt contentment when he had, the night Gondor's victory was announced, secreted her into his bed. All lust for a queenship passed; all aching for swords and battle cries evaporated like the dew of a long ago morning.

_I abandoned_.

Her title remained, of course. In her homeland, in her brother's court, she was still called a shieldmaiden, though she had renounced it upon the acceptance of Faramir's proposal. But no sword fit her hand now, nor would she take one up. She learned an unexpected gentility in Minas Tirith. Dernhelm died easily but with enough pain, the death of a warrior who had come to the last battle of a long career. When she fell onto Angmar's bodiless corpse he had left her, having done his duty to king and kin. The person who begged leave to ride out to the East was an empty shell of a woman who desired the last part of her to die with him.

They had honored her in Rohan, after her brother, having paid due respect to their uncle, assumed his throne, and not, as she had once feared, as merely a valiant woman. The men of the Rohirrim, the Marshals whom she had so envied, raised their cups to her as if she had lived all her life as one of them. And when she, performing her old duty, raised the golden cup to her brother's lips, he had in turn offered it to her, bidding her drink as a warrior in the king's honor. She trembled as she drank—her greatest desire fulfilled, and she wanted nothing more than for it to be over. Faramir kissed her forehead when at last she was permitted to sit again and it was only then that she stopped shaking.

"I would have you," he said later, when alone they tended the fire in the midst of the empty hall, "were you shieldmaiden or poor servant girl tending horses."

"That is well, then, for we do not part from our horses easily, and mine will come to Ithilien with me." She smiled for him, kissed his high cheek.

"And you will love it more than me, I'll wager."

"If it serves me better than you, perhaps. Our horses are faithful even to death."

"And so will I be to you." Always he came back to this, as if he feared there was some underlying seriousness in her amusement.

He spoke against several minutes later as if to prove it: "You will be sick for this place, Éowyn. You do not feel it now for you yet may come and go here as you please. But when we come to rule Ithilien, you will have requirements that will hinder your leaving, and there will be many miles separating you."

"And I have agreed to go there with you, so long as you will have me. Rohan has no need of its shieldmaiden now, nor can she serve it."

He kissed her then, in full view of any who might be walking in the shadows of the hall. But Wormtongue no longer patrolled Meduseld, and she did not fear the scrutiny of the king's men. They were glad for her as her brother had been.

_It is best, my lady, if you do not allow the men your private audience anymore. They will have intentions for you other than those you know. You are beautiful and they will want to possess that beauty, your body, Éowyn, and you will be nothing more to them. _

Gríma's voice, his cold hand pressing gently upon her shoulder. If the wizard had not come to set her kinsmen to war he would have had for a wife, would have had her lying next to him in the dawnless morning. A pretty slave she would have been, pleading for him as he had for her. He would have made her a mistress of Orcs, a dark queen of filth and war, of bodies strewn across the plain.

She felt no remorse for him, no honorable mercy as her uncle showed him once released from his captivity. News of his death in the Shire gave her but pause to shudder and nothing more. Whether he had loved her or not was of no consequence—she was hobbled by darkness no more and could at last banish from her mind the foul temptations he had poured into her ear.

_I abandoned_.

Yes, she abandoned; she fled as if the Dark Lord himself were at her heels. She abandoned the place where her fathers had died seeking honor, where her uncle had lost his final years to madness, where she had lived in fear and in disgrace, lusting for war, for the sword in her hand. She abandoned a people she was not fit to lead, not as the repressed child of a woman she had been then.

And was she fit to lead them now? The hands of the king were the hands of a healer, but they did not make a queen, not even in Ithilien. But her husband was virtuous and strong, though he did not believe himself to be, and would govern his people under the king better than his predecessors. She found herself preferring to be a mere statue at his side, a silent image of his own success; the prospect of glory now only shamed her.

Perhaps, in the end, that was Angmar's final legacy to her: she would earn her glory and would shun it, for it would only recall his dark visage and the torment she had suffered at his cruel hands.

_…he will not slay thee in thy turn…_

"Éowyn?"

She gasped, drew back from him. He sat up in the bed with a faint smile upon his lips; her easy unnerving never failed to amuse him, though she knew it also made him fearful.

"Lie down, lady," he said, and he took her into his arms. There could be no mistaking them now—he was warm and vital and felt nothing of the dark.

She pressed herself into him and he once more encircled her in the blankets to drive from her skin the morning cold. Once she would have blanched at the thought of being so close to him, but she had been his willing lover since the shadow departed her in Minas Tirith, and now knew only comfort with him.

"Are you well?" he whispered into her ear, his short beard scratching against the side of her face.

She nodded simply to feel it again. "A dream. Nothing more."

"The same dream?"

"I escaped it for five mornings and it has found me today."

He kissed her forehead. "Hardly a bargain, I'd call it."

"Would you? I am too grateful for the other mornings to rue this one."

"Then sleep a while longer, while there is yet darkness and no pressing need to awaken." He nuzzled her throat, laid his head gently upon her collar where he so often slept at night. Her shield arm went across his back, holding him in place as if he might otherwise leave.

"They will end one day," he said quietly. His blinking eyelashes grazed her neck. "There is no fear to feed it now, and in time it will starve and die."

_And perhaps I must die first_, she thought, but did not say. A shudder passed through her.

With a concerned kiss he tightened his arms about her and once more brought his lips to her ear. "Think not on it, Éowyn. Whatever darkness still haunts your mind, give in no more to it."

She had no response for him. She signaled what she desired of him with her hands moving over him, and kissing her hungrily he obliged—there was contentment, if not peace, when the morning came.


End file.
